


Perihelion

by evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)



Series: Perihelion [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: After, F/M, Frank POV, post-season, soft frank, therefore spoilers abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 11:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12770307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil%20bunny%20wolf
Summary: “I’ve had, I’ve had a hell of a week, but that, I think, might’ve been part of the worst of it.”She clears her throat, and then again, drawing her knees in. Her eyes shine a little in the lamplight. “Yeah. I was scared too. For you.”--Frank visits Karen, after.





	Perihelion

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just. So overwhelmed and overjoyed for soft Frank, you have NO idea. So I spent a day breaking my heart a little writing this.
> 
>  
> 
> [This song is this fic. Just saying.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpFRMDaA6Z4)

It takes him a few days, after he’s been sprung from the hospital. Takes him a while to be able to move without wheezing, for his head to stop feeling like his brain’s too big for his skull; for him to get used to the new name for real, this time. To being known.

He’s not too sure what he thinks about Curt’s sessions, yet, but it’s good to talk about some of it; to be heard. Not all of it. There are things he can’t touch yet, things he won’t, things that hurt and are dug in so deep he doesn’t think he can find the end of it, not sure what’s at the end. But he does it - he goes to group. He listens. Curt gives him a new book.

Bill, Billy, Uncle Billy. William fucking Russo.

He sleeps, and for a while he doesn’t dream.

 

-

 

He makes it to Karen’s in the first week.

“Hey,” is the first thing he says to her, on her doorstep.

“Hey,” Karen breathes, bracing herself against the door frame a moment. Her gaze finds his and fixes there before being drawn away - to the mess of his face, the healing scars, the bruise that stretches from one cheek to the other. She's, she's in her pyjamas, he hasn’t seen her in those before. It must be late; he hadn’t really noticed the time.

“I wasn't sure if you’d come,” she’s saying. “I went to the river, yesterday. And the day before. Just in case. But…”

She releases the door frame, still looking at him, and he looks back, finding the scratches from the shrapnel, the exhaustion that seems to go bone deep. He gets stuck looking, a while.

“Yeah, uh, sorry about that.” He glances down, and then checks the hall. There’s no-one there except for them and the sound of a TV next door, and the family opposite, chatting over what smells like dinner. Karen steps back to let him in and he follows, thumbing his cap in his hands. “I was, uh, down and out for a bit. Tied up, part of it. You’re okay?”

She laughs a little. “Yeah,” she says, turning towards the kitchenette. He closes the door behind him and kind of stays where he is, not sure where to put himself. “I’d heard a little about some of that.”

“Why, uh, why were you looking? Everything alright?”

He can almost hear her eyeroll. “ _I’m_ fine, Frank. Actually-” The fridge door sticks as she opens it. “Actually, I was just worried about you.”

He’s getting used to that, hearing her say it.

“Beer?”

“If you’re offering.”

He hasn’t seen her apartment since he’d first been here, in what feels like months ago. She’s still got those flowers. They’re couched out on a side table, not far from the window.

He makes his way over and rubs a petal between his fingers and it gives and bends, the fleshy way that flowers do.

She comes up beside him, sees the flowers, and some kind of expression he can’t read crosses her features before she gestures with the beer to the sofa.

“Sit with me?” she asks.

He takes the beer she offers and one corner, and she takes the other.

“How’re you doing?” he asks, leaning forward onto his knees. “After the hotel, I mean? The police give you much trouble? That, Mahoney, he letting it go?”

He thinks it’s been about a week or so since the shitstorm at the hotel. When he looks back he can, he can still see the expression on that kid’s face as he’d reached for the vest’s trigger. The expression on hers, and how close they’d got - how close it had been, in the hotel room, in the basement.

She ducks her head as she smiles, in that habit of hers. “It took a while, but yeah, he let it go. Decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Not sure I blame him.” She smiles again, a little tightly this time. She’s barefoot, today. She’s got her feet firmly on the carpet, toes curling against the cold. “And I’m alright. I’m alright.”

“Yeah?" He clears his throat, tips his head, trying to meet her eye. "That was, that was some pretty deep shit we got into, yeah?"

She laughs and tilts her bottle towards him. “Don’t think I’ll ever get used to having my life in danger - or you saving me. But yeah. I’ll be fine.” Her voices catches. “Thank you for being there. It’s - pretty high up there on the list of the most terrifying things I’ve ever been through. But then, you were there.”

He wrinkles his nose. He’s not going to accept that, she doesn’t need to _thank_ him. “Don’t need to thank me. I was just - you know, I couldn’t let anything happen to you. That wasn’t gonna happen.” His throat sticks a little and he takes a drink to clear it, keeping his mind on the present, on her, whole and watching him from behind her bottle on the other side of the couch. Bare feet digging into the rug. Shit, it’d been so close. “That was- I was scared, Karen. You know, I was fucking terrified in there. Didn’t know if I could’ve done anything, gotten anywhere, if he’d-” He tosses his cap towards the table and scrubs at his head. “I’ve had, I’ve had a hell of a week, but that, I think, might’ve been part of the worst of it.”

She clears her throat, and then again, drawing her knees in. Her eyes shine a little in the lamplight. “Yeah. I was, I was scared too. For you.”

After a moment she curls forward around her hands, her hair slipping from her shoulder. She brushes it back impatiently behind her ear. “I, uh,” she starts, swaying a little towards him. “I heard what happened, at the carousel. Or rather, that something had happened - they’re tight on the details, and despite harassing just about every contact I had in the hospital they took the victims to, I couldn’t get _anyone_ to give me even a hint of what it was about. But then the narratives changed, about the bombers. And I knew something else had changed too. I mean, the carousel, for christ’s sake-”

She stops herself and presses her hands to her mouth, leaving them there until she’s taken a shaky breath, two. Then she forces them down again. She takes a drink. He’s not quite looking at her; he’s got his fingers wrapped too-tight around his beer.

“Wasn’t my choice of location,” he mumbles, thudding his drink back to his knee and she laughs, a little sadly.

“Yeah, I didn’t think it was.”

She lets the silence sit another moment, giving him the opportunity to speak, or not, and he feels like his bones creak as he closes his eyes and breathes, testing the limits of his broken rib.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” her voice comes, softly.

He frowns, tilting his head. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“Yeah. Kinda.”

A beat. He feels her accept his silence, what he wants to say but can’t quite get together, not yet. His eyes start to burn and memories play in his mind - Frankie, Maria, Lisa lolling over a horse painted like a candy cane and cotton candy fuzz on Bill’s fingers and he forces his eyes back open.

“No, not really,” he amends. “Not at all.”

She nods. He tilts his head, fumbling with the words.

“I found-” He takes another breath, shorter and sharper. He feels her come closer. “I found the people who did it. The real ones, the last ones, the ones who knew about it, planned it, did it.

“And, the thing is, the thing is though, it wasn’t just them. I made choices. I’ve done things, I’ve worked with these people, shit. I was one of them.”

“Kandahar,” she says, and it isn’t a question.

He looks at her, and he nods, just slightly, and then he has to look away again.

“I killed them,” he says, after a beat. “I killed every last one of them. It’s over, all of that. It’s done.”

Her voice is quiet. Everything is, except for the sound of their breathing.

“So, where does that leave you, Frank?”

“I, uh,” he starts to say, but the words are thick in his mouth and he swallows and then drinks, passing the beer from hand to hand. He can see her beside him, at the edge of his vision - her bare feet beside his, toes in the rug. He feels the dip in the cushion and smells her shampoo, coconut and vanilla. “I don’t know.”

What goes unsaid is: and I don’t know what to do with that, anymore. What goes unsaid is: I’m scared shitless.

He feels it when she takes a breath, long and deep; feels her exhale when it shakes.

She leans her shoulder against his, or maybe he leans against hers, warm and steady. They stay there a moment, not quite looking at each other. Their hands find each other. Squeeze and let go.


End file.
